


Substitutions and Wayfarers

by poisontaster



Category: Farscape
Genre: Canon Related, Gen, Homesickness, Loss of Control, Loss of Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-06
Updated: 2006-02-06
Packaged: 2018-02-15 03:43:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2214522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/pseuds/poisontaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John's mind isn't the only thing he's losing. This takes place from “A Human Reaction” through “The Hidden Memory".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Substitutions and Wayfarers

**Author's Note:**

> _…but none of them held you forever; it was that other/who came, that other you, biding his time till you went/till you parted yourself from that intimate bypasser/from the wagons and trains of your life/substitutions and wayfarers_ \- From “Little Boy Lost” by Pablo Neruda

Chiana slid her fingers sensuously along the length of Moya’s wall. She likes the resilient, responsive warmth; she likes that it was Moya’s skin, all out on display for anyone to see, to touch. It’s so…decadent.

“Frell!”

She cocks her head, curious. That sounds like Crichton. Then, if she’d had any doubt:

_”Fuck!”_

Only hu-mans could make cursing sound so ugly, she thinks, skittering her way up the corridor to find out what’s all the fuss. After all, might be fun.

***

John pulls up his other sock, and it, too, rips with a loud purring noise, leaving his heel bare.

_”Fuck!”_

John rests his head on his knees and breathes through his clenched teeth. He just wanted to put on his damned _boots_ ; when did the ordinary, _sane_ act of putting on your boots become such a damned difficulty? It’s not like he has a lot to choose from, wardrobe wise. He hadn’t packed for the flying tour of the Uncharted Territories, after all.

Suddenly, he has a lot more empathy for the castaways of the Minnow on _their_ three hour tour.

***

John holds something white and fluffy in his hands. Not doing anything with it. Just…sitting.

“I’m bored,” Chiana announces throwing herself across his bed and watching the coverlet slide and ruck. “There’s nothing interesting to steal and we haven’t been to a decent planet in _ages_. What’s that?”

She plucks the whiteness from his hands. It’s just an old tube of cloth, now ripped and not interesting at all. She wrinkles her nose and holds it out to him again.

John takes it from her and runs it through his fingers again and again. “It was my sock,” he says sadly.

***

“Oh, for _frell’s_ sake, Crichton!” Aeryn rips the sock out of his hand when he shows her, still sitting on the bed’s edge. “It’s just a sock!”

***

No.

No. No, no _no_.

John holds it up to the light, disbelieving. She didn’t.

_That little…tralk! I’ll kill her!_

It doesn’t occur to him to wonder when he started using _tralk_ , even in his head.

***

_”Chiana!_

Frell! What did she do now? Or rather…what do they know about?

John comes stomping into her quarters, shaking a fistful of something in her face. “John,” she says, purely from reflex and licking her lips, “it’s not what you think…”

 _What?_ she wonders. _What is it?_

“Tell me you did _not_ use my T-shirt to clean coolant out of the intake valves!” He shakes it at her again, and she recognizes the sad tangle of greenish-gray cloth, now corroded and spotted.

“It was what was there!” she snaps in reply, throwing up her hands. What’s his problem? “It’s _old_ anyway!”

He crowds her, bringing both hands up like he wants to strike her. Chiana angles her face up, defiant. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s been hit. “It. Was. _Mine_ ,” he grits through closed teeth before turning on his heel and stomping away.

Well. _He’s_ sure sensitive!

***

Aeryn’s stomach hurts she’s laughing so hard when John brandishes the blotched and holed shirt at her indignantly.

“I’d think you’d be glad Chiana’s finally doing any work around here at all,” she says, when she can breathe again. She claps a hand on his shoulder and squeezes.

John glares at her and it sets her off a second time.

***

“You’ll never fix it,” Chiana says, watching John carefully as she pockets his last dentic.

“I can fix it,” John answers grimly. He squints at the _pellas_ thorn and tries to thread the length of plaited vine through it again. “People—humans—have been mending clothes for centuries. How hard can it be?”

Chiana tries very hard not to laugh when the _pellas_ thorn just rips the jumper material worse. Well, at least for half a _microt_.

***

“No, I have never “mended” clothing,” Aeryn says flatly, arms crossed over her ribs. “I got them from the commissary like every other member of the regiment. Besides, it’s a bit like a broken bone, isn’t it? It will never be as good as it was before it was damaged.”

***

Carefully, John folds the jumper and stores it in one of Moya’s niches with a sigh. He’s not worried. Even Sparky won’t steal this.

***

_Peacekeepers._

Just the word is enough to set off atavistic crawls of dread like the scamper of a million microscopic DRDs over every available inch of skin. And now he’s going to try and _impersonate_ one of them?

Oh, he really must have hit his head to come up with this one.

***

She’s not supposed to be up here. Both Zhaan and Aeryn have threatened her—separately and together—about going through Moya’s stores. So when she hears footfalls in the corridor, she creeps and crawls behind stacks and boxes until she’s curled up out of sight.

“…because _someone_ has to be in charge, that’s why!” Aeryn is shouting. She shouts quite often, and Chiana’s only glad it’s not at her. “No one’s going to believe I’m running the ship alone! Besides, you look like a vagabond. You need proper clothing.”

“Proper?” John sputters. “ _Proper?_ Walking around like some rock-star fetish queen?”

“I didn’t understand any of that,” Aeryn says, “but in any case, if we’re not going to all end up in custody or _hezmana_ , you need to at least _try_ and look the part of a Peacekeeper captain. Now try these on.”

There’s the soft clank of John’s belt. Chiana peeks carefully around the edge of the nearest crate.

“Well don’t _watch_!” John says, glaring. Aeryn huffs and turns her back. Chiana doesn’t.

***

“Aeryn,” he says, and she turns back. If any of her regiment had used that pleading tone of voice… Well, that was the point, wasn’t it? By the time a Peacekeeper reached a like age, they _wouldn’t_ have used that tone, or any one like it. Peacekeepers don’t.

But John isn’t a Peacekeeper, or even a Sabacean. Sometimes she wonders how his weak species ever survived long enough to invent space travel, but at this moment, it’s neither here nor there.

“John,” she says, gripping both his shoulders in her hands. He actually looks something like civilized in good clothes. It feels strange to say his given name aloud, one of the very few times she’s done so. “You can do this,” she tells him fiercely, willing him to believe. She _needs_ him to believe. “You can. You will.”

He lets out a shaky breath and for a moment, his forehead falls to rest against hers. Then he collects himself, pulling slowly out of her grip. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “Yeah. I’m good.”

“Good.” She nods, as if it’s nothing less than she expects. “Now I have to go arm myself. Don’t get lost on the way down.”

Crichton cracks a smile. “I’ll do my best.”

Aeryn rolls her eyes.

***

_On their way to a Peacekeeper Gammak Base…_ It’s hard for Chiana to keep the delighted grin off her face. The possibilities for mischief are…intriguing. She wants to bounce in the seat, restless underneath her skin, but she suspects it would only make Crichton yell at her again. So instead, she leans in close and talks in his ear.

He’s irritable and edgy, but when _isn’t_ he? Sometimes she thinks he’s got no sense of fun. If all humans are wired as tightly as John Crichton, it’s a wonder they lived long enough to propagate.

She should reassure him. Make him relax just a bit. “The thing with the scent…that was a real good idea,” she murmurs. They’re on approach.

“Thank you,” he says automatically, eyes on the readouts. Then: “Wait…what? What thing with the scent.”

“Changing your scent. To smell more like a Peacekeeper. It was a smart move. Because frankly?” She wrinkles her nose. “You kinda stank before. I didn’t want to mention it, seeing as how you’re an alien and all…”

“Wait…what?” Crichton says again. “I… I _smell different_?” He sounds…shocked.

“Well… _yeah_.” Who knew this would be such a big deal? This is what happens when she tries to be reassuring. She should just stick to what she knows. “Of course you do. I mean, it’s been a slow process, but now, really…you smell a lot more like a Sabacean. It’s a good thing, right?”

John slumps back in the seat, the Peacekeeper leathers creaking. “Yeah,” he says dully. “Just frelling _great_.”

***

_John Crichton. My name is John Crichton, I’m an astronaut. My name is John Crichton…_

There are moments that is seems almost funny that he ever spent a moment being terrified of Bialar Crais, or that he thought Crais was the worst the Uncharted Territories had to throw at him.

He curls up on the slightly damp stone and wonders if the stiff lines of his Peacekeeper _(disguise)_ uniform is all that holds him together.

***

“Where’s John?”

“How the _hezmana_ should I know?” D’Argo is irritable. She’s feeling less than sociable herself.

“He and Zhaan have some _yotz_ scheme to let that Stark take one of Moya’s shuttles.” She puts her hand on the bulkhead, leaning, and pretends that was her intention all the time. The gene graft is taking well, but she still feels lightheaded and slightly unsteady much of the time.

“Why the _frell_ would we do that? Are they completely _fahrbot_?”

“I think so,” she retorts dryly. She pushes herself off the bulkhead and goes looking for him.

He’s not with Zhaan, and he’s not in any of the other places one might expect to find him; the galley, Pilot’s den, with Chiana, with his module. Finally, exhausting all other possibilities, she heads down to his room.

Crichton seldom spends any time in his room. Some of it, she thinks, is that he is a ridiculously social creature, always chatting up one or another of them as if he has nothing better to do than run his mouth. The other part—which she dislikes thinking about—is that she recognizes in him a reticence to call any place on Moya _his_ , or claim any place aboard as truly his own, other than his own clunky and unaesthetic ship.

She understands it; the reason she avoids thinking too deeply on the matter. _Mine_ implies permanence as well as ownership. Making yourself too much at home in any one place means closing to door on too many futures…or in Crichton’s case, perhaps closing the wormhole is a better analogy. While she deems it the height of foolishness, she does have to admire the tenacity of his belief that he will someday find the door that will lead him back to his absurd planet of defectives.

He _is_ in his room; she hears him long before she reaches the door, soft muffled and indeterminate noises. She’s actually in his doorway before she recognizes them for what they are. It’s been so long since she’s heard it, and certainly from anyone she would consider an adult. Aeryn sighs to herself. Although she’s not sure that calling Crichton an adult is the most appropriate term in the first place.

He’s crying.

She opens her mouth to deliver some blistering and well-placed verbal riposte when she sees him. He’s curled into a tiny childlike ball, his flight suit—which she hasn’t seen in some time, now that she thinks about it—clenched in both hands. His face is buried in the cloth, and that’s what’s muffling his sobs.

Aeryn considers, head cocked. John looks like a Sabacean, but she is too often reminded he is not. He hasn’t the strength or endurance. He is—sometimes surprisingly—fragile and weak, and from everything she heard from the others about Scorpius’s Aurora Chair, it’s broken softer men than he. Look at that mind- _frelled_ reject Stark. Not that the Banik are sterling examples of strength themselves. But…still.

She remains still, aware of the unfamiliar warmth running under her breastbone; something more than pity, something less than contempt. She feels too, a rather unfamiliar—and somewhat horrifying—impulse to go into the room and sit with him. What she would do there she has no idea, but the impulse remains.

In the end, though, she doesn’t.

She does, however, stand guard outside his door, to make sure he remains uninterrupted and unheard.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://ixchup.livejournal.com/profile)[**ixchup**](http://ixchup.livejournal.com/) for the 2006 Uncharted Elves exchange. The request was John h/c fic with Chiana, set in S1 or S2. Thanks to [](http://sixersfan.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://sixersfan.livejournal.com/)**sixersfan** for beta services and hand-holding.


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